CHAPTER XVIII
THE TRANSITION FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE
This intervening period—the twilight between the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Modern World—needs a little further emphasis, from the very fact that it is a period of transition and sheds light both on the time before and the time after. On its emotional side it belonged to the Middle Ages, on its intellectual side it belonged to the Modern World.
Its religion was essentially mediæval. For instance, a religious wave arose in Perugia, spread through Italy, and crossed the Alps. Hosts of penitents, hundreds and thousands, lamenting, praying, scourging themselves, went from city to city. Men, women, and children, barefoot, walked by night over the winter's snow, carrying tapers, to find relief for their emotional frenzy. These Flagellants were like a primitive Salvation Army, and gave unconscious expression to the profound and widespread discontent with the Church. Their actions, however, so clearly exhibited religious mania that governments took alarm; the hard-headed rulers of Milan erected six hundred gallows on their borders and threatened to hang every Flagellant who came that way.
Other forms of religious sentiment were more rational, and expressed themselves in passionate calls for peace between neighbours and countrymen. Priests adjured the fighting cities to be friends: "Oh, when will the day come that Pavia shall say to Milan, Thy people are my people, and Crema to Cremona, Thy city is my city?" In Genoa, one morning before daybreak, the church bells rang, and the astonished citizens, huddling on their clothes, beheld their archbishop, surrounded by his clergy with lighted candles, making the factional leaders swear on the bones of St. John Baptist to lay aside their mutual hate. Gregory X (1271-76) pleaded with the Florentine Guelfs to take back the banished Ghibellines. "A Ghibelline is a Christian, a citizen, a neighbour; then, shall these great names, all joined, yield to that one word, Ghibelline? And shall that single word—an idle term for none know what it means—have greater power for hate than all those three, which are so clear and strong, for love and charity? And since you say that you have taken up this factional strife for the sake of the Popes of Rome, now, I, Pope of Rome, have taken back to my bosom these prodigal citizens of yours, however far they may have offended, and putting behind me all past wrongs, hold them to be my sons."[13] In consequence of Gregory's passionate entreaty, one hundred and fifty leaders of each party met and embraced on the sandy flats of the Arno.
The most famous of these emotional peace-makings was the work of a Dominican monk of Vicenza. On a great plain just outside Verona, a vast congregation assembled (a contemporary said 400,000 people), from all the warring cities far and near, bishops, barons, burghers, artisans, serfs, women, and children. The monk preached upon the text, "My peace I give unto you." The great company beat their breasts, wept for repentance and joy, and embraced one another. Then the friar raised the crucifix and cried, "Blessed be he who shall keep this peace, and cursed be he who shall violate it;" and the audience answered "Amen." It is hardly necessary to say that these emotional peace-makings were soon followed by martial emotions; freed prisoners were hurried back to prison, the recalled were banished again, and sword and halberd were picked up with appetites whetted by abstinence.
The intellectual side of this period is best represented by the universities, which had sprung up in many of the North Italian cities in the preceding century. The term university signified a guild of students, and possessed many of the characteristics of our colleges. The university was composed of students and professors, and governed itself. It owned neither lands nor buildings, and in case of need could shift its abode with little trouble. The students, at least in a great university like that of Bologna whither young men flocked by thousands from all Europe, were divided into two bodies, those from beyond the Alps and Italians. These two bodies were subdivided into groups according to their state or city. Each group elected representatives, and these, together with special electors, elected the rector. This representative body made a formal treaty with the town authorities, and secured good terms, because the presence of a university, bringing money and fame, was of great consequence to the town. The professors were appointed by the students. At Bologna Roman law was the chief study, and very famous jurists lectured there. We may remember that Barbarossa had recourse to Bologna when he was in need of lawyers to determine his Imperial rights. It was Roman law that attracted the great concourse of students, for the growing needs of civilization made a constant demand for men learned in the law; but other branches of knowledge were also taught, theology, canon law, medicine, and astrology, as well as the so-called quadrivium, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.
The universities, although theology and canon law were taught in them, distinctly represented the secular side of intellectual life. The religious, at least the theological side, was represented by the Church, and more particularly by those philosophers who devoted themselves to that mixture of theology and philosophy known as scholasticism. The greatest of them was Thomas Aquinas (1227-74), whose surname is derived from a little village, Aquino, once existing near Monte Cassino in Neapolitan territory. Aquinas lectured at various universities. His great work, "Summa Theologiæ," was a justification of the Roman Catholic faith by an appeal to the reason and to science as then accepted. He started on premises laid down by the Church, and justified all the derivative doctrines by close logic and clear reasoning, as well as by appeals to the Bible, to Aristotle, then deemed the possessor of all knowledge, and to the Church fathers. His work is a complete exposition of God, nature, and man, as conceived by mediæval theology, and is still taught by the Catholic Church as the true exposition of its doctrines. The grateful Church canonized him, his treatise being the miracles he had performed, and named him the Angelic Doctor. Those of us whose minds have no natural aptitude for scholasticism, find his views on purely earthly matters much easier to understand, and not uninteresting, as they throw light on the democratic character of the Church. Speaking of positive law, Aquinas says that it should consist of "reasonable commands for the common good, promulgated by him who has charge of the public weal;" and of kings, that "a prince who makes personal gratification instead of the general happiness his aim, ceases to be legitimate, and it is not rebellion to depose him, provided the attempt shall not cause greater ills than his tyranny;" and, of the nobility, that "many men make a mistake and deem themselves noble, because they come of a noble house.... This inherited nobility deserves no envy, except that noblemen are bound to virtue for shame of being unworthy of their stocks; true nobility is only of the soul." St. Thomas Aquinas is also interesting because his theology inspires Dante throughout the "Divine Comedy."